


this dream was not supposed to break

by scheherazades



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-03
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2018-02-19 18:08:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2397875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scheherazades/pseuds/scheherazades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Standing alone in the midnight air outside a hotel in the middle of nowhere, without a jacket to keep her warm was not exactly what Tessa Virtue had planned for her prom night.</p><p>based on a dialouge prompt from tumblr: 'can you come get me?'</p>
            </blockquote>





	this dream was not supposed to break

**Author's Note:**

> originally a response to a tumblr prompt but i like it, so to hell with it, i guess. thanks to miss tessa herself and the inspiring words she tweeted me this week, i'm learning to find the time for things other than school. hope you like this. :)

Standing alone in the midnight air outside a hotel in the middle of nowhere, without a jacket to keep her warm was not exactly what Tessa Virtue had planned for her prom night.

It was supposed to be perfect. She was supposed to go to prom with her boyfriend, to match her dress to his tie, to have a corsage tied around her wrist, to dance the night away with her friends that she rarely saw anymore because of the training schedule that kept her out of school a lot. She was supposed to  _enjoy_ herself, and maybe  _enjoy herself_ in other ways with her boyfriend at the end of the night, in the hotel room he’d booked for them. It was supposed to be  _fun._

And fun it was, for the most part. She got ready with her high school girlfriends, squealing with excitement as they pulled on their dresses and helped each other to do them up and slide them on without ruining the tans they’d gained only days prior to this, and she had  _fun._ They drank a little champagne before they boarded this vintage bus they’d hired for their group to take them to the hotel in which the ballroom the school had hired for the prom stood, and they took pictures with each other, with their respective dates, with parents and friends who came to see them off. 

She took pictures with her mom, her dad, her sister, her brothers, and Scott, of course. She almost asked him to be her date, as he had done two years previously for his prom, when she was the envy of all her sophomore friends because she got to hang out with the  _senior boys._ Almost, because her boyfriend asked before she had a chance to reconsider. He decorated her back garden (with the help of Scott and her sister, she would later discover) with fairy lights and candles, all arranged to spell out ‘prom?’, and she was overwhelmed by the gesture, and agreed instantly. 

She took pictures with the boyfriend, and he sat next to her on this bus, kissing her neck and her cheeks and her lips almost the entire way. Embarrassed by the public affection, she squirmed a little and tried to engage in conversation with her friends, to try and get the message across subtly. 

She soon realised she didn’t have all that much in common with these friends anymore.

They were all gossiping about the girls in their year group, about who so and so had hooked up with this past weekend, about who had taken this and that girl’s virginity, about silly high school things she’d had no interest in, frankly. They gossiped, she won medals. 

Even so, she pushed the feelings of anxiety and discomfort to the back of her mind and focused on the positives. This was going to be fun. She would make sure of it.

***

They enjoyed a meal to the highest standard first of all, sitting in their agreed upon groups, catching up on the happenings in everyone’s life. Everyone seemed to be excited to move into their college dorms, and here Tessa was having already living in her own apartment for the last two years and preparing for another season of senior level skating, the last one before the Olympic year. She felt so old, in comparison to all the other girls here. 

Regardless, she enjoyed the meal and she enjoyed the dancing that came afterwards, something she was more comfortable with. She danced with her friends and her entire year group in one of those iconic group dances everybody in the world knew, and belted the words to her favourite song holding hands with the girls she came with. She locked her arms around her boyfriend’s neck during the slower songs, swaying from side to side with him, silently thinking of how simple this was in comparison to the complexity of the dance patterns she learned every year. 

She almost yearned for something more.

She missed the rink.

She missed Meryl and her puppy obsession, and the pictures of the dogs she wanted. 

She missed Charlie and his glaringly obvious crush on Tanith, and the way he would blush at any remotely sexual comment or situation. 

She missed Scott.

***

As the night came to an end, and she hugged all the friends she wouldn’t see for a while, she noticed a clear lack of a boyfriend around, and she assumed he’d already headed up to their room for the night. Saying her goodbyes to everyone, she went in the same direction. 

When she found their room, or what was  _supposed_ to be their room, she quickly fixed her hair and make-up before she went in. 

What she found, or rather who she found, however, was not what she expected from her prom night.

As she entered the bedroom, there indeed was her boyfriend, with another girl. A girl she recognised as Stacey, the blonde with the boobs, one of the girls her friends had been gossiping about earlier that night.

"What are you doing?" She asked, feeling her temperature and her temper rise within her. 

"Shit. Um, Tess, you, uh, you know Stacey, right?" 

Damn right she knew Stacey.

"Hi Tessa." The blonde had the audacity to speak to her? This was new.

"Don’t ‘Hi Tessa’ me like nothing is out of the ordinary here! Why are you in bed with  _my boyfriend?”_

"I swear, he came on to me. I tried to stop him really, I knew you guys were pretty serious but, um -"

"She’s obviously lying, Tess. Don’t listen to her." 

Was he really trying to defend himself?

"You know what? I don’t care. I’m out of here. In case it wasn’t obvious, we’re done." 

And so she left the hotel she was supposed to spend the night, cold and alone and tearful. 

***

When she got outside, she pulled out her phone and called the first person she could think of.

"Tessa?"

"Yeah, it’s me." She replied, voice wobbling.

"Why are you calling me this late? Aren’t you supposed to be at prom?"

"Long story. Can you please come get me?" She sniffled, furiously wiping away the tears that betrayed her. 

"Hey hey hey, why are you crying? I’ll be there as soon as I can, promise. Please don’t cry, Tutu."

"I’ll explain later. Please come, Scotty. I just want to come home." She cried, unable to keep the tears at bay.

"Alright, okay, I’m coming right now, I swear. You want me to stay on the phone?"

"No, um, it’s okay. Thanks."

And so she waited. She sat in the hotel lobby, in her red prom dress with her extravagant hair and make-up and these ridiculously high heels she just wanted to get rid of, and she desperately tried not to cry.

When he arrived, she ran straight towards his truck and he gathered her in his arms like precious fine china, to be protected from the outside world. How could anyone do this to his Tessa?

As soon as he touched her, she lost it. The tears she’d tried to hold back for the last twenty minutes betrayed her and she sobbed brokenly in his arms. 

"Oh Tessa. I’m so sorry, kiddo." He muffled into her hair, pressing kisses to the top of her head as she cried in an attempt to soothe her. "Talk to me. Tell me what happened."

"He cheated on me." She hiccupped out the words, and wiped away the tears that just kept falling. "Am I really that awful? I know I’m not blonde but I’m not that bad, right?"

"Tessa, I swear to god I’ll kill him if I ever lay eyes on him again. No, you’re not awful. He’s the awful one. I’m so sorry, T. You didn’t deserve this at all. Come on, I’ll take you home."

So on the drive back him, she tucked herself under his arm, leaning against him as he drove. Insisting she didn’t want to go back to her parents tonight, he took her to his instead, carrying her to his bed to relieve some of the cramping in her legs. 

She looked so tiny and fragile in the shirt he lent her to sleep in, sitting on the end of his bed like a lost sheep. She begged him not to leave her alone tonight, so he didn’t. He lay beside her and held her in his arms as she cried for another man and for another life, and that’s the way his mother found the two of them the next morning. Tightly cuddled together, Tessa’s elaborate red dress thrown haphazardly across the desk chair in the corner. 

She decided she’d let them be. Whatever forced Tessa into her son’s arms on prom night instead of her boyfriend’s must be serious, and she wouldn’t be the one to wake her from the peace she seemed to have found in her son’s arms.

She always knew they’d be together somehow, someday. 

She hoped, however awful it sounded, that someday was today and this served as the epiphany the girl who had become almost a surrogate daughter needed to realise that this is where she should be.

 


End file.
